Bob Fass, who was born June 29, 1933, is an American radio legend who was a pioneer of free-form radio and who has been on the air in the New York region for almost 50 years. His late-night program, "Radio Unnameable," was first broadcast in 1963 on listener-sponsored Pacifica radio station, WBAI. From the beginning the show featured regular appearances by counterculture figures such as Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Wavy Gravy, and broadcast the first performances of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles." Fass’s on-air calls-to-action brought thousands into the streets for countercultural happenings and his show helped spawn the Yippies. Bob Fass told his audience in the 1960s: “I wanna be a neuron -- I don’t wanna be the brain. We’re all the brain.” Fass can still be heard every Thursday night from midnight-3 a.m. on WBAI 99.5-FM in New York.
Paul Lovelace is a documentary filmmaker who produced and co-directed (with Jessica Wolfson) "Radio Unnameable" about legendary radio figure Bob Fass. The film, which was screened in December 2012 by the Austin Film Society, is currently showing around the country and the DVD will be released later this year. Lovelace has previously won film festival acclaim for his short films, "Robert Christgau: Rock N’ Roll Animal," about the esteemed Village Voice music journalist, and for the 35mm narrative short, "The Sonnets." His first documentary feature was "The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose," a portrait of the psychedelic folk duo. Paul also wrote, produced, and edited the PBS documentary, "American Roots Music: Chicago."
About "Radio Unnameable," The New York Times wrote that the filmmakers "pay tribute both to an influential voice in broadcasting and to the times whose ideals and follies he helped articulate," also calling Fass "a gentle, soulful voice" who "kept [New Yorkers] from loneliness." Michael Simmons wrote at The Rag Blog: “Fass and ‘Cabal’ [Fass' name for his radio audience] changed history and deserve the credit, and Lovelace and Wolfson have provided the first in-depth cinematic look. It resonates like an epic tale with the hero emerging as a long-shot survivor.”
Host and Producer of Rag Radio: Thorne Dreyer; Engineer and Co-Producer: Tracey Schulz. Rag Radio (koop.org/ragradio) is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer, cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog (theragblog.blogspot.com) and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The show is broadcast (and streamed) live Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern time). Contact: ragradio@koop.org. Running time: 57:54.